About

About

The community developing, implementing, and using
'open source' software for government at all levels continues to grow. There are now hundreds of sites containing
information about this 'open' government community and related open
source software, technologies, and solutions spreading across the web. As
we started spending thousands of hours surfing the web searching and
looking at all these sites trying to find the 'good' sites - sites that
contain useful information; have been around for a while; are high
quality, and are regularly updated - we decided to put all those links
on our own web site to save others from having to spend a lot of their
time repeating the same process. We hope you find this site a useful
starting point as you investigate the future of 'open'
government and associated software & technologies. Our intention is to continually improve this web
site over time.

Webmasters

Peter Groen worked for the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) within
the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) for over 30 years. During his federal career, he occupied a number of
senior Information Technology (IT) management positions within VA
Headquarters and in the field. He has served as the Director of the
Health Information & Technology Sharing (HITS) Program, the Director
of the Medical Information Security Service, Director of VHA
Telecommunications Services, the Deputy Associate CIO for the Veterans
Health Administration, as well as the Chief Information Officer (CIO) at
the VA Medical Centers in Atlanta and Columbia S.C. He served as the
national project manager for the VA Computerized Patient Record System
(CPRS) as well as the VA Internet and VHA Intranet Redesign projects.
Prior to working for the VA, Mr. Groen served in the U.S. Navy for six
years. He was a supervisor of the Combat Information Center aboard the
guided missile destroyer, U.S.S. Sellers DDG-11, during the Vietnam War.

Mr. Groen obtained his Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) degree from Clemson
University and a Masters of Public Administration (M.P.A.) from The
Pennsylvania State University. He served five years as an adjunct
faculty instructor at the University of South Carolina and as an adjunct
faculty member of the Computer & Information Sciences
Department at Shepherd University in West Virginia, for many years. He
helped found the
Shepherd University Research Corporation (SURC) and served as its
Associate Director for almost 5 years. Mr. Groen has written numerous
articles and co-authored several books over the years with a focus on
information technology in health care. He is regularly invited to speak
at professional conferences across the country. He has also served on
the Board of Directors for the West Virginia Health Information Network
(WVHIN) and iConecto.com
and served as the principle
investigator for the Medicaid Transformation Grant (MTG) eHealth
initiatives for the State of West Virginia. He is currently assisting
with the start up activities of several for-profit and non-profit information technology (IT) organizations.

Free and open source software (FOSS) is no longer an oddity. It is now being used by 80% of organizations around the world and the movement continues to grow. In essence, 'the war is over'. As a result, support for this site will now start to diminish as it is no longer needed. - Peter Groen

U.S. National Debt

"No
nation ought to be without a debt. A national debt is a national
bond." - Thomas Paine, "Common Sense"

The use of open formats, open source software, and open standards enables the government to make data freely available to the public for a variety of purposes, as well as to create lower cost programs that are more efficient and consumer-driven. Many state and local governments are already implementing open technologies to better serve their citizens. - OSFA Federal Open Technology Report Card 2011

If you would like to
suggest new material or links to be added to this web site, please email
groenpj@cs.com

Collaboration, Open Solutions, & Innovation

- Collaborationallows one to save time, energy, and money by – cooperating with others; sharing information, knowledge, and resources; and working jointly on projects with other employees, business partners, and even customers.- Open Solutionsfacilitate the ability of professionals, organizations, computer systems, and end users or consumers to communicate and freely share information in an open, interoperable, and transparent way.- Innovation unleashes the knowledge and applied creativity power of individuals and/or organizations collaborating and working together in an open and transparent manner to significantly improve business processes, reduce costs, and improve the quality of end products.

In other words, the three key management strategies of Collaboration, Open Solutions, and Innovation (COSI) are interlinked in concept and execution as follows: